75A - PH - MEDICAL MARIJUANA - PROHIBIT

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Transcendent or faux-transcendent experiences aren't only dismissed because they're hokey -- to some, they seem to be downright unpatriotic. Still, in spite of the noise and in between the zealots, attitudes are quietly changing. if polls are any indication, the average American is more open to the idea of medical marijuana than ever before. The dialogue has never broken free from the larger drt~ war discussion, but it has cooled off some. On a case-by-case basis, we seem to be remembering that we don't want our loved ones' chemotherapy worse than it has to be, and that in fact we, or our friend, or our aunt, has smoked quite a bit of pot for quite a long time, and nothing bad has happened yet. Getting a physician's recommendation. from Ellis may have been easy, but getting him on the phone for an interview is another story. It isn`t until a month after my visit that he agrees to talk. "What were you doing before this?" I ask. "I was at emergency rooms," he says. "Which ones?" "Various emergency rooms in the Bay Area," he says. He won't say how many patients he's seen since opening the office in July -- "let's say several. hundred," he finally tells me. Nor will he say how many are ultimately granted recommendations. Iget the impression most walk away satisfied. "What about fakers?" I want to know. Ellis assures me that fakers don't make it to the examination. room. "They realize it's a l.egititnate medical. setting and go home," he says. "They can't get in without supporting documentation." Itell Ellis that I was not asked for supporting documentation. He says he has since changed that policy, though I sense that he did so reluctantly. "We don't [require supporting documentation] in the E.R.," he says. "People come in complaining of a headache, we go over to an open cabinet and they leave with a shot of Demerol in their butt." "And. that's unfair?" I ask. "Marijuana is much more benign than conventional narcotics," he says. We talk about his history. Ellis graduated from the University of Illinois medical school at Chicago in 1978, he says. His work as an emergency physician exposed him to "a real. need" for better pain management strategies. A few seminars on medical. marijuana persuaded him to look into alternative treatments. If Ellis was uneasy at the beginning of our conversation, he's in a gallop by the end. I ask why so few California doctors are recommending marijuana for pain four years after the passage of 21.5. They re afraid, he says. They re afraid of the [California] Medical Board, and of their peers, and possibly of potential legal ramifications ... even though they're clearly protected by the law." It's the California Medical Baard that gets Ellis fired up. "They've been officially silent [on medical marijuana], but behind closed doors they've been harassing physicians," he says. "That's the bottleneck on 21.5. Patients can't get their does to prescribe medicinal. marijuana, even though. the law allows for this. In California, you. might find 1 in ],000 doctors" who would. Ron Joseph, the board's executive director, calls Ellis' charges ridiculous. "It's a nice fallback," Joseph says, "but I defy him to cite one case where the board has harassed a single doctor." As Joseph tells it, it's not the board's policy to have an official position on medical marijuana -- it would just as soon have a position on X-rays. "We don't say whether it's good or bad, appropriate or inappropriate," he says. "We simply ask, 'Has the physician applied good judgment?"' Because the board's procedure is simply to investigate a "physician's actions as they're brought to our attention [by a patient]," he says, it has no incentive to bother doctors who are prescribing marijuana. So why aren't more doctors prescribing marijuana? Joseph blames the government. "The chilling effect has come from federal [agencies]," he says. "Doctors might be afraid of losing their DEA permit" (which allows them to prescribe controlled substances). 35 7 5A-44